


Take a Hike

by GravityPinefalls



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Blanket Fic, F/M, Sharing Body Heat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 20:39:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16562759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GravityPinefalls/pseuds/GravityPinefalls
Summary: It’s Autumn 2018, and a few months after their 19th birthday, Dipper and Mabel take advantage of a long weekend to meet up and have some quality time together.  But a rainstorm derails Dipper’s plans and sends the twins’ vacation into an entirely different direction.





	Take a Hike

_We got something._  
_We both know it._  
_We don't talk too much about it._  
_\- Tom Petty_

They emerged from the hemmed-in trees to the ridgeline peak shortly before noon, yet the darkness of the canopy-covered trail did not give way to the brightness of an unobstructed midday sun.  Dipper noted this with confusion, then alarm, then disappointment, as he realized a heavy fog had rolled in from the North, just in time to spoil the scenic view.

Dipper turned to Mabel, just a few steps behind him.  He’d planned everything perfectly, or so he thought. His research on EveryHikingTrailGuide.com informed him that storms in this area came and went with little warning.  He’d kept his phone’s WeatherNerd app pinned to the trailhead all week, watching the radar with concern as dark green blobs of rain passed over the mountains on Tuesday and Wednesday, and relief when the skies cleared.  Just yesterday, the forecast was excellent, which comforted Dipper during the lonely 200-mile-drive from his college campus to James Forks, a decidedly unremarkable Pacific Northwest mountain town. Of course, compared to Gravity Falls, what town wasn’t?

The morning’s forecast was less promising, calling for precipitation later in the day, but he made sure they’d be out and back long before then.  Nevertheless, the cold front that was supposed to come in late afternoon had decided to arrive early.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

The beautiful view of Stevenson Point, the entire purpose of this four-mile Saturday morning hike, was shrouded completely in fog, to the extent the lookout point before them just fell off into a perfect sea of white.  The swath of green river valley below them may as well not have been there.

“Dammit, we’re fogged in,” he said.  “I’m so sorry, Mabel. This is my fault.”

Mabel rolled her eyes and pushed past him.

“Last I checked, you and Grunkle Ford don’t control the weather yet.”

She paused mid-stride, and turned to him, eyebrow arched.

“You _don’t_ , right?  You promised me you and Grunkle Ford quit working on the God Machine last summer.  And you also promised me to never again work on anything so freakishly powerful you’d call it something as disturbing as ‘ _the God Machine_.’”

“Yeah, yeah of course,” Dipper said, waving his hand.  Even after six months Mabel stil wasn’t letting that incident go.  “I don’t know what we were thinking on that one. Sometimes Ford and I get into a rhythm.”  


“I know _exactly_ what you were thinking,”  Mabel said. “You were watching some stupid movie with Grunkle Ford and the bad guy made a machine to control the weather, and Grunkle Ford got so mad about the movie showing it all wrong.  Grunkle Stan and I left you two bozos alone for like an hour, and when we came back from grocery shopping you were in the basement with a half-built doomsday device.”

“To be clear, we’d just finished assembling one of five core components, so it was 20% complete at best.  And it had a variety of important applications other than ending the world. Ford’s really sensitive about attaching emotional labels like “doomsday” to his inventions. And like he told me, is it really fair to call a ‘hammer’ a ‘nail driving device’ just because that’s its most obvious use?”

She glared at him.

“The important thing is that we stopped,” said Dipper.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got my eye on you two.  One more stunt like that and I’m calling up that reality TV show and seeing if they do interventions for supervillainy.”

“Duly noted.”

She sighed, and dug her cellphone out of her back pocket.  Her first two selfies were perfunctory, taken while her eyes were still rolling at him, but she warmed up over the next few, her smile returning as she ran to his side and threw an arm over his shoulder.  

“Mabel?”

She rapid-fired a series of shots of their heads and shoulders, Mabel’s smile wide and beaming, Dipper’s face slack and confused, the space behind them white as a bowl of milk.

“Mabel, come on, why bother?  There’s nothing to see out there.”

“Who cares?  It’s a nice clean background.  I’ll photoshop something in later.  C’mon, stop being a droopy doof and smile already.”

He tried, although his expression was little more than a frown with bared teeth, until she began to poke him in the ribs, quickly finding his ticklish spots.

“H-hey,” he spat.  “Stop that!”

“Not until you smile for real!”

Her phone machine-gunned shutter sounds at them for a moment as she twisted the device in her hands, capturing their faces and shoulders in various angles.  She stopped poking him, instead wrapping her arm around his waist, pressing her hip to his, and tilting her head to lean into his shoulder.

“Ah, perfect!” she said, apparently getting a sincere smile out of him, and she finally relented, releasing him from her grip, but only after standing on tip-toes and pressing her lips to the side of his head, placing a dry and comically loud kiss on his scalp, just above his left ear.

“Mwuah!” she said, and following that, “Pteh, pteh,” presumably at the shagginess of his hair against her lips.

There was a narrow wooden bench off to the side of the lookout, and they sat there for a moment as Mabel skimmed through the photos on her phone screen.

“Not bad at all.  I got the survey marker over there in a few of them, so we’ll at least be able to prove we were here.”

With a nod of satisfaction, she put her phone away, and curiously, placed her hands on her knees and closed her eyes.

“Mabel?”

“Ssh,” she said.  “Just close your eyes and listen.”

He did so, and after a moment he could pick up the sounds of leaves rustling in the soft breeze behind them, and the immaculate silence of the invisible expanse before them.

“Oh,” he said softly.  Mabel nudged his knee with her own in an I-told-you-so gesture.

“Even if you can’t see it,” she said, “you can still feel it. Just miles and miles of nothing, because we’re the highest thing around here. There’s sounds of the woods behind us but absolutely nothing in front of us. Just pure silence in that direction. So you can imagine _anything_ out there. Like maybe there’s a nice green valley, maybe with a river in it, and there’s a place where the river bends and there’s a tiny little town.  It’s giving me a full-on Bob Ross mood right now. Totally peaceful and perfect. Like I could reach out there right now with a paintbrush and put anything I want out there.  So I don’t even care if we can’t see anything.”

He opened his eyes, a moment before she did, giving him just enough time to regard her face, her expression sincere and unguarded.  She always knew the right thing to say to him, and he worried sometimes that she had to put more effort than was fair to reassure him through his anxieties.  But of course, he could never actually say that to her; it would only prompt her to reassure him about _that_ , and so on and on.  

She turned to him, and brought her hand to where his lay on his thigh, squeezing for a fraction of a second before letting go.

“I’m really glad you brought me here,” she said.  “I’m having a great time.”

He blushed at this, and nodded.  Did Mabel have any idea how much he needed to hear that right now?  

They shared a breakfast bar and some water before turning back.  The fog seemed to descend with them, and them sweep away some ten minutes later.  One mile and 300 feet beneath the peak, thunder began to rumble from all around them, long, slow, and distant.  Above them, the white fog gave way to a low gray ceiling, and it began to rain.

“I’m sorry, Mabel,” he said. “This was a really crappy day to do this.”

“Would you stop apologizing?”

She was just a few steps behind him in this narrow section, and her exasperation was evident.

“I’m having fun here, okay? A little rain never killed anyone.”

At this point, at least, the incline smoothed to the point that the downward climb wasn’t particularly challenging, even in the wet, and they managed another mile over the next fifteen minutes.  This brought them to the intersection of the Stevenson Point trail and the Pacific Coast Trail, where there stood a small shelter for through-hikers. If they continued down the spur trail, it was another two miles to the gravel parking lot where Dipper’s hatchback was parked. But the rain was growing in intensity, and the shelter was unoccupied and dry.

“Let’s wait here for a little while,” he said. “Maybe the storm will blow over.”

The shelter wasn’t much more than three plywood walls and a corrugated metal roof over a narrow bench; it kept the rain off them so long as the wind cooperated, but it felt a lot more like a rickety bus stop than a place to actually camp.

Beside him, Mabel had brought her braid over her shoulder and began wringing it out. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead, and her tongue was just barely sticking out of her pursed lips, as it often does when she’s deep in thought.

College had done nothing to interrupt Mabel’s sweater-making hobby, and her latest creation was this heavy green number, Alpaca wool, with three stylized mountain peaks on the front, all in white. She’d worn it around her waist for much of the journey, but threw it back on as the clouds rolled in. On the portions where she took the lead, the heavy fabric sparkled with dewdrops caught in the loose fibers, which made him smile. But as the soft but steady rain began, he watched the fabric grow heavy and stretch out.

This bothered him much more than the ruined view from the ridgetop.

“I’m sorry about the sweater, Mabel.”

“Huh?”

She tossed her braid back over her shoulder, the wet hair dangling to mid-back, and then looked down, grabbing the fabric that hung down almost to her knees.

“Oh, this? No big deal. I was trying a new weave on this one, and I guess it’s way stretchier than I expected.”

“You asked me if it was going to rain and I said it wouldn’t, Mabel. I know how hard you work on those sweaters, and because of me, it got ruined.”

“Geez, Dipper. It’s not ruined. It’s just been upgraded. See?”

She stood up, and tugged the sweater down to mid-thigh, covering her denim shorts completely.

“Sweater dress,” she said. “All the rage in European fashion circles these days.”

She grinned, placed her hands on her hips, and runway-walked back and forth, for the three or four steps the shelter’s small size allowed.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, cocking her head over her shoulder. “I’m taking this baby to Milan.”

A laugh escaped him, and a smile forced its way into the corner of his lips, but he turned away, fighting her attempts to cheer him up.

“C’mon, brosephene,” she pouted. “Why’s it so hard to believe I’m enjoying myself here?”

It was a really good question.

He looked her over, hands on her hips, bent at the waist, leaning into him as he sat before her.

He sighed.

“I … I don’t know. I know I’m being a real downer. I just … god, Mabel. This is the first time we’ve seen each other in three months.  This was the first year we weren’t together on our birthday. And I know that’s what we signed up for when we decided to do different colleges. But I just had no idea how much I’d miss you.  And this thing we’re doing … I mean … this was a really big deal for me. For the past couple years, we’ve only seen each other, in person, on holidays with family. I think the last time we hung out together like this, just the two of us, we were in high school.”

Her expression softened.

“So when you agreed to this thing,” he continued.  “To basically jump in our cars and drive straight at each other for almost four hours … I did everything I could to make it perfect. Got our schedules working together, found a good place exactly halfway between our colleges, like almost to the mile.  And when you drove up to the hotel last night, it felt like Christmas for me. But now it’s like … I don’t know … like all I can think of is the fact we have only three days together and I’ve already blown one. And I’m sorry. You trusted me to take care of everything and I screwed up because I tried to beat the weather. I know you wanted to go to that art museum, and I talked you out of it. We could be, I dunno, looking at that one Picasso they have, or having a $30 coffee at that ridiculous cafe, and we’d absolutely be dry and not looking at another two miles of hiking in the rain.”

She shook her head.

“Reality check,” she said. “First off, you did _not_ , never _have_ , and never _will_ , talk me into doing _anything_ . It’s not like the woods are _your_ thing, and I’m just tagging along. I like hanging out in nature just as much as you do, and living in a city for two years hasn’t changed any of that. Second, we’re doing the museum tomorrow _anyway_ , so it’s not like we’re missing anything. Third, and I’m not sure you fully grasp yet how important this is – _I met a chipmunk_. His name is Aloicious and I love him more than life itself. He lives in the woods here and he will never, ever die.”

She did indeed _meet_ , as opposed to _see_ , a chipmunk on the trail, an hour before they reached the peak. She saw it in the woods, crouched in front of it, and coaxed it to approach and eat some granola crumbs from her hand. Dipper could only stand by, stunned, and wondering if his sister was secretly a Disney princess, as he’d always suspected.

He started a bit at her sudden closeness, as she put her hands on his shoulders.

“Fourth,” she said. “you’re my favorite person to do stuff like this with. All our phone calls and video chats only tide me by. This sort of stuff-” she waved her hands in a _all around us_ gesture - “this is the real deal.  Hanging out you like this is like recharging my batteries.  You could’ve invited me to a paint-drying competition and I’d still show up and lead a cheer for Team Beige.”

He found himself blushing, and turned away, which apparently gave her an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.

“And finally,” she said.  “The most important point of all.”

She moved suddenly, and there was a sound like “floof” all around him, and things went dark.  His arms were pinned to his sides.

“Mabel? What the hell?”

“A- _ha_!” she said.  “Sweater trapped!”

From the sensation of weight and tightness across his back he realized that Mabel had lifted her sweater over his head without actually taking it off herself, and was now embracing him in a bear hug.  From her standing position, leaning over him, his head was just about level with her upper abdomen, and her wet t-shirt pressed against his forehead and nose.

“Mabel, are you nuts?”

“Ssh,” she said, gently rubbing his shoulders through the material.  “It’s worse if you fight it.”

He did fight it, if half-heartedly.  Truth be told, they hugged each other once last night when Mabel first arrived at the cheap little hotel he’d booked for them, and it didn’t really stick.  His nose and cheeks and ears had been aching from the cold for a while, and Mabel’s stomach was soft and warm against them, even if her undershirt was damp.  They were too old for this sort of playing around, he knew, but given the opportunity to hold her close, he couldn’t pass it up. After all, they were in the middle of nowhere, so it’s not like anyone would come across them and get the wrong impression.

“Gah, Mabel, you can’t _do_ stuff like this.”

Even as he said so, his hands reached forward, resting on her hips.  She moved closer, putting one knee on the bench to his side, and the other knee on the opposite side, and suddenly she was straddling him, sitting in his lap, wrapping her arms around his back.

“No tears now,” she whispered, patting the back of his head.  “Only dreams.”

He laughed, and let his hands move to the small of her back, keeping her from losing balance.

Mabel adjusted position and let herself sink down onto his lap, and the weight of her backside settling on his thighs was somehow reassuring.  Physical contact between them had been a natural part of growing up, and something they had to cut down on starting in their teenage years. There might be a time where two siblings could successfully argue that platonic cuddling was an actual thing, that Dipper would happily watch an entire movie with Mabel sitting in his lap, and neither of them would find anything even slightly sexual about the whole arrangement, but that time for that argument was not high school.

And, Dipper supposed, once that happened, things sort of stayed that way.  At nineteen, both of them were officially adults now, and had been for a while, and part of being an adult, so far as Dipper understood, was that you cannot hold hands with a girl, and certainly not let her sit in your lap, if she is not your girlfriend.  So for Christmas and Thanksgiving and various breaks in the spring and summer, when Dipper and Mabel traveled to their parents’ or grandparents’ homes, they made do with over-long hugs, as often as possible.

She adjusted herself, and he realized she’d slipped her head and arms into the sweater, the empty arms dangling on either side, the open neck a stretched-out oval between their heads, and the material tented around them.  In the tight confines, her nose brushed his cheek, her breath sweet cinnamon.

“Awkward to everyone else sibling hug?” she asked.

He laughed, nodded yes, and she leaned forward, head on his shoulder, arms wrapped around his back, chest pressed to his.

After a minute or so, as the air inside the sweater-tent became stale, they loosened their grip and pulled away.

“Pat pat,” she said, slapping his back with her palms.

“Pat pat,” he replied, doing the same.

His skin was warm again as she extricated them from the sweater, which was now stretched beyond “dress” and well into “poncho” territory.  Mabel gathered the loose fabric around the collar and twisted it into a knot, lest it slide right off her shoulders and flop to the ground.

“Looks like the rain stopped,” she said.

The sky remained dark, but it looked like the gap in the weather had arrived.

“Two miles to the car,” Dipper said.  “You think we’ll make it?”

Mabel shrugged, smiling sweetly.

“If not,” she said, “we’ll just stretch this sweater out a little bit and make it into a raft or something.  Just paddle our way down the mountain.”

“Yeah, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

The were off.  He hoped to make good time, but the trail was saturated, forcing them to detour around deep puddles and walk unsteadily over sucking mud and slippery tree roots.  They were just shy of the first mile marker when the low rolling thunder suddenly built into a crescendo, and the sky opened up.

Heavy, dense raindrops beat down on them with such intensity Dipper thought they might bruise his shoulders.  Within minutes his hair was soaked and plastered to his scalp, a rivulet of water continuously streaming from his chin and down his chest, his gray t-shirt making a _schlorping_ sound  as the saturated cotton occasionally peeled loose from his stomach and chest with his movements.  Splashing in mud puddles and the occasional slip and slide had left mud caked on his boots, socks, lower legs, and cargo shorts, although the rain was doing well to continuously wash all that away.

“Kinda muggy out!” chirped Mabel, beside him.

She wasn’t doing much better, her sweater starting to look like a Dr. Seuss creation, the sleeves unraveling and the collar stretched out over one shoulder, exposing her pink undershirt.  Upon catching him looking, she patted the all-but-dismantled garment.

“Ah’m ah-sorry, Brudder-oh-mine. I don’t think Ol’ Sweatery’s gonna make it,” she announced, in an accent that seemed to bounce between Midwestern farmer and Texan ranch hand.  “When we get home, you go ‘head ‘n get pa’s rifle, and we’ll take her b’hind the shed, y’hear?”

He laughed, spraying rainwater from the constant stream spilling off his nose and over his lips, and trudged on.

A few minutes later: “Your rustbucket has a working heater, right?”

“Yeah, far as I know,” he said.  It was still mid-October, and this would be the first time since April he’d needed to use the car’s heater.  Odds are it would smell like burnt lint, and not actually produce any warmth for a good five minutes, but after that they ought to be nice and toasty.

Dipper had imagined that at some point he’d be so soaked that it wouldn’t matter anymore, that once you are so wet you could not get wetter, you’d adjust to it.  This turned out not to be the case; the water spilling down his chest and back were constantly sapping warmth from his skin. Soon he found his teeth chattering, his fingers aching.  He thrust his hands under his armpits to try to get a little bit of warmth into his fingertips, but he worried this would just be a prelude to him tripping and eating dirt. Well, mud, at this point.

Salvation.  Gravel crunched beneath their boots, and the trees parted.  Here was the signage for the trailhead, and beyond, a small gravel parking lot, empty except for a small white hatchback.  

Dipper’s keys were basically floating in his right front pocket at this point, but he fished them out and unlocked all the doors.  He took the driver’s seat, Mabel the passenger’s. Mabel cheered when the engine turned over, drumming a congratulatory para-diddle on the dashboard, and he flipped the heater to full blast.

They sat there for a moment, shivering, teeth chattering, rubbing their hands together.  The dashboard clock read 1:50 pm. Including the brief rest at the shelter, they’d managed the downward hike in just about two hours.

“It’s gonna take a couple minutes to heat up,” Dipper said.

She nodded.

“I think I’ve got some towels in the back.  Maybe even a blanket,” he added.

“Yeah, let’s get those,” Mabel said.

They opened the doors and dashed for the cramped backseat, and Dipper tripped the lever that reclined it into the cargo compartment, allowing him to lean over and reach over the items he normally kept in the trunk.  There was the cardboard box full of extra oil, extra steering fluid, brake fluid, a few tools, jumper cables, and some torn up white t-shirts he used as shop towels. While some were streaked in oil, there was a pile of not-yet-used rags which were still perfectly clean.  And there was a blanket, which he intended to spread out for a picnic if he and Mabel managed to work it into their weekend. It was old and grass-stained, but thick, and warm.

He piled all this onto the bit of seat between them.  Mabel’s sweater was already in the wheel-well, and she immediately grabbed a handful of rags to try to soak up the water from her hair.

Her shirt was soaked through, the pink material pretty much translucent at this point, to the point he could see her navel and the slight curve of her belly, and though he made sure to look away he was fairly sure he could see the outline of Mabel’s bra.

He stared ahead for a moment, looking over the driver’s headrest to the dashboard, and the tiny temperature gauge that still hadn’t moved a millimeter from “cold.”  He gripped the bottom of his shirt, squeezing some water out of it, and after a moment’s hesitation, peeling it off and dropping it on the floorboards.

“Uh, Mabes,” he said.  “How, uh, how exactly are we going to do this?”

“I dunno, I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

“I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m soaked through.”

“Yeah, me t-t-t-too,” she said, her teeth chattering.

“I’m just saying, if you weren’t here, I’d be bare-assing in that blanket until the heater finally kicks in.”

“S-s-same here,” she said.

“Is that - that’s too much, right? I mean, we’re not eight-year-olds sharing a bath anymore.”

“N-n-no,” she said.  “W-w-w-we’re not-t-t-t…”

He reached forward, rubbing her shoulders, hoping to warm her up and get her attention at the same time.

“Ah, god damn it,” he said.  “This is stupid. You’re freezing, Mabel.  I’ll be all right for a while. There’s an overhang near the trailhead.  I’ll hang out there for maybe five minutes. Plenty of time for you to get out of those clothes.  That blanket and the backseat are all yours, okay? When I’ll get back I’ll just warm up in the driver’s seat.”

He picked up his t-shirt, and before putting it back on, began wringing it out, wincing as he realized the stupidity of doing so inside the car.  The carpet in the footwell was already squishing wet beneath his boots, and he could tell it was going to be a project to air out the car before mildew set in.  The thought of leaving all the windows of his car open while sitting unattended in a hotel parking lot made his chest tighten in anxiety. He’d have to take everything worth stealing out of the car and store it in the hotel room for safe keeping.  And even then, nothing would stop some rando from climbing inside and poking around.

His train of thought was mercifully broken by a firm grip on his forearm.  The rain continued to pound on the roof of the car as his eyes met Mabel’s.

“It’s ok-k-k-k-kay,” she chattered. “You don’t h-have to go.”

Her eyes flicked left and right, avoiding his gaze.

“Mabel?”

“I just … D-dipper … could you … d-d-do me a favor?”

“Of course.  Of course, Mabel.  Anything.”

“G-go first,” she said.

He cocked his head in confusion.  Was that not _exactly_ what he had just proposed, before she stopped him?  That he would _go_ , well outside the car, _first_ , and Mabel would be free to take care of her situation - a situation inching toward hypothermia - without any risk to her modesty?

She frowned at his apparent confusion.

“I … I know I gotta get out of these clothes,” she said.  “I know I do. I just c-can’t … I c-can’t do it if you’re still …”

“Here?” Dipper ventured.

“Dressed,” Mabel countered.

His mouth opened, a follow-up question on his lips, before it clicked.

“Oh!” he said.  “ ‘Go first.’ I get it.”

The oddness of the request deserved some degree of contemplation, but Mabel was shivering and chattering and pale, and that would be fixed once Mabel got out of her wet clothes and under a warm blanket, and to get _that_ to happen, Dipper need only do one very simple thing.  A thing he very much wanted to do anyway, as the sopping wet clothing clinging to his waist and hips and thighs continued to suck warmth out of him and make his skin chafe and sting.  

He knew, at some level, that this probably wasn't necessary.  That the car would warm them up eventually. Given the choice between freezing to death and being naked together, he’d obviously rather they both be alive.  But was that a hard and fast requirement? Did death have to be on the table? Was their modesty so precious that they must protect it up to the point their lives were at risk?  Or was severe discomfort - which they were clearly suffering from - enough to flip that switch?

More to the point: was there something wrong with him, that somehow, getting naked with his twin sister didn’t bother Dipper nearly at all?

He was unbuttoning his shorts as he realized the implication Mabel’s request that he undress first.  That being naked in such close proximity made it impractical or even impossible for them to avert their eyes from each other, and Mabel may have already considered it inevitable that he’d see particularly private parts of her body if she stripped down.  It appeared Mabel was okay with that, so long as Dipper was willing to reciprocate. That would make it perfectly fair, wouldn’t it?

He decided that this was the reason Mabel was not turning around, not covering or even closing her eyes.  Which wasn’t to say she was watching him with any particular intensity, either. She wasn’t staring, wasn’t looking him up and down, wasn’t giving him any sort of attention that made him uncomfortable.  She was just looking at him as if getting naked was the most natural thing in the world for him to be doing right then. For his part, he believed her.

He shucked off his shorts and boxers, worked them over his hiking boots, and placed them beside his shirt.  He turned to Mabel, whose gaze flicked downwards a moment before meeting his eyes.

Had the stars aligned such that he was in this same situation with Wendy, or heck, _any_ woman he was even _slightly_ attracted to, the urge to cover himself, and explain the ever-important issue of _shrinkage_ would have been overwhelming.  But he said nothing, neither hiding nor displaying himself, sitting quietly for two or three seconds, as Mabel processed the fact he was well and truly naked.

“Oh,” she said.  “You … you did your underwear too.”

A flash of panic shot through him.  How stupid could he be, to go that far?  Dammit, this was his sister; she didn’t need to see any of that.

“S-shit, sorry, I thought you -”

He reached for the jumble of shorts and boxers on the floorboards, but she pressed a hand to his shoulder to stop him.

“N-no, I just … no, you’re right.  We should. It’s stupid not to...”

Her touch had the side-effect of distracting him from his prior intention to stare at the seat in front of him in the all-important space between Mabel undressing and Mabel covering herself with the picnic blanket.  His eyes followed Mabel’s hand as she withdrew it, his gaze tracking the chipped seafoam-green polish as her fingernails slipped under the hem of her pink undershirt, and continuing to follow the white knuckles as the material moved up her body.  

He would tell himself afterward that he wasn’t staring, per se, that the cold had simply addled his senses to the point his lizard-brain was running the show.  Lizards, of course, have movement-based sight, so far as Dipper knew, so it was only natural for him to follow the movement of that pink hem as it traced up Mabel’s chest.  Sometime past the dainty navel, the soft curve of her belly, and the curve where her ribs met her solar plexus - visible as she arched her back and the bottom of her shirt began to hide her face - he realized he should look away.  He didn’t.

She was wearing a white bra of such thin material that, now wet, it was near enough to see-through.  Dipper had known, in at least an academic sense, that Mabel was a woman, and therefore had breasts. But the shape of her chest was always just a feature of her clothing to him, something disconnected from her body.  It was a bit of a shock to fully realize that the way Mabel’s tops draped over her chest was only partially driven by the material, that there was actual structure there, a part of Mabel’s body he’d never actually seen before, and the pure physicality of it was impossible to deny, not when Mabel’s bra clung so tightly to her flesh that he could see the transition from milky white skin to dusky areola, the fabric oh-so-gently tented over delicate yet profoundly erect nipples.

 _Oh fuck_ , thought Dipper.   _That’s your sister, so those aren’t breasts.  Those are something else. Something you don’t want to look at.  Something you don’t want to touch. Get it together._

The collar of her shirt caught on her chin, then her nose, and then slipped off, her eyes meeting his again.  He couldn’t read her expression. Surprise? Judgment? Or something else entirely?

“S-sorry,” he said, looking downward.

“S-sokay,” she said.

He wasn’t sure how to interpret that.  Did she mean his transgression was noted but forgiven?  Or that it was not a transgression to begin with? His eyes returned to her.  He couldn’t help it. He was just profoundly, insanely curious, and something twinged in his stomach as Mabel reached behind her back and unfastened something that caused her bra sank down her chest an inch.  He waited for her to ask him to cover his eyes, but the request never came.

As his twin shrugged off her bra, Dipper found himself looking at Mabel the exact same way as she had looked at him.  To turn away, to cover his eyes, would only acknowledge that his sibling was a sexual being, that she was something he could desire in that way, and he must look away, because seeing her in a state of undress will make him aroused.  But to look, not with salaciousness but mere curiosity, tendered in him not desire, but awe. As far as Dipper knew, as far as he ever imagined, there was no actual body underneath Mabel’s clothes, no actual female form. The possibility that Mabel had nipples, like every other human being, had never occurred to him before. Yet there they were.  He realized, with some concern, that Mabel was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen.

Their eyes met, and Mabel flashed a smile between bouts of teeth-chattering.  

“This is so c-c-c-cray,” she said.

“ _Totes_ cray,” he agreed.

This got a giggle out of her, setting off another flip-flop in his stomach, which intensified as Mabel unbuttoned her shorts and slid the zipper down, exposing a pink triangle of underwear, dotted with a white flower pattern, before arching her back, hooking her thumbs into the waistband, and working the wet fabric down her thighs.

Dipper was in the process of unfolding the picnic blanket when he realized that Mabel was divesting herself of her panties.  This part of her body, as well, mapped to nothing in Dipper’s mind - so far as he knew or cared, if for some reason Mabel should lift up her skirt, there’d be a doll’s pelvis there, featureless and plastic.  And as he watched her strip naked - he somehow couldn’t stop himself - the small tuft of reddish-brown hair at the apex of her thighs threw him, not only because it was such a striking contrast to the milky-white skin of her hips, but because it was strangely similar to his own anatomy.  Deja vu struck him - he was sure they’d done this before, ten years ago or more. A hot summer day, squirt guns and water balloons and kiddie pools. Changing out of their bathing suits in the laundry room, and for the first time, having mutual curiosity over their physical differences, registering each other’s “bathing suit areas” as “weird” in the two or three seconds between shucking off their wet suits and wrapping themselves with towels.  Were his feelings the same now? Or did Mabel’s physical maturity, and Dipper’s own hormones, change things? Did he desire her? Would he have an erection if the cold had not driven his genitals into hiding?

No, he decided.  Absolutely not. It was the same curiosity, and nothing more.  

He pulled the blanket over the both of them, now laying back in the mostly-reclined back seat, a carefully established foot-wide gap between them.

They lay that way for a minute, maybe less, shivering and sucking breath through chattering teeth, the blanket covering each of them from their necks to their boots, facing each other but trying not to look at each other, the car’s heater blowing still-cold air upwards from the footwell, into the gap of the blanket between them.

Mabel’s knees bumped his stomach as she pulled them up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

“S-sorry,” she said.

“S’okay.”

She closed her eyes a moment, and this made it easier for him to study her face without embarrassment.  Her lips were tinged blue, and the knees that had just brushed against him had been ice-cold.

“Mabel,” he whispered.

Her eyes opened, and again, he could not read her expression, but he let himself think there was something there.  Anticipation, maybe. They were already naked, already sharing a blanket. He could stand the cold - if barely - but Mabel was clearly in worse shape.  Would it be fine to stay like this, and wait another three or five minutes for the heater to get to temperature? Probably. But was probably enough? Would it be okay to relieve Mabel’s discomfort, or would the touch of his skin to hers be a far worse ordeal than her current one?  If she didn’t want to get closer, would she have said so already? Or was the idea of sharing body heat - particularly without the barrier of clothing - so abhorrent to her that it wouldn’t even cross her mind, that it wouldn’t occur to her to ask him to not touch her, because she’d never expect him to do something so inappropriate.

And yet, he was thinking it.  He was thinking about pulling her close, sharing his heat with her.  If he considered the situation warranting such an act, then surely the same thought would occur to Mabel.  It would, at least, be an idea familiar enough that she’d probably not recoil if he suggested it.

“Mabel,” he said.  “We can get closer if you want.”

She nodded sharply, and with great caution he scooted closer to her, unable to see as he reached for her under the blankets, and quietly congratulating himself for his hands making contact with her shoulders and not her breasts.

Her cheek was on his chest as he belatedly considered the logistics of bodily contact, and how best to arrange their respective anatomies to avoid inappropriate bits meeting each other.  It seemed most appropriate for Mabel to roll over to her right side, allowing him to spoon her. In that position he could press his chest to her upper back, and angle his hips in such a way to keep a wide gap between her backside and his pelvis.  

Mabel apparently disagreed, and wordlessly uncoiled underneath the blankets, her boots clunking against his as she scooted closer.  She pressed her cheek to his shoulder, and something soft touched his chest.

He tensed up as she established physical contact down the length of his body.  The softness against his chest he realised were Mabel’s breasts. She could have covered them with her forearm, a fold of the blanket, one of the clean rags still draped over the headrest behind her, or anything, really.  But no, she was making direct contact with his skin, her nipples gently scratching him. She continued to move against him, her stomach touching his now, and then, coarse hair against his thigh. He recoiled on reflex, but her right leg hooked over his knees, pressing his cold-shrunken genitals against the hollow of her hip.

His stomach roiled, his saliva turned acidic with fear.  Mabel made no sign to suggest she understood the contact between them, and he convinced himself that her skin was so numb with cold that she couldn’t feel his penis against her.

He waited a moment or two, until he was confident she didn’t notice or (somehow) didn’t care that his junk was squashed against her.  He would have to pay attention to that, of course, and scoot further away as he warmed up, but for the moment there was absolutely zero risk of him getting hard.

In what was every bit as much an effort to distract himself from such concerns as to warm Mabel’s skin, he curled his arms over her shoulders, palming the flesh, then began gently stroking up and down her back.

“Does that help?” he asked.

“Mmm.  Yeah, thanks.”

Her breathing was hypnotic, her skin cold and clammy yet pleasant beneath his fingers, muscles tensing and relaxing under his touch.  He moved in long, slow strokes, from her shoulder to the small of her back, moving from her spine outwards with each stroke, as if to paint her back with his touch.

The air became warmer, and he found himself sleepy, his movements becoming sloppy.  On one stroke he circled her hip with his fingers and thumb, sliding upwards and finding an odd texture against the pad of his thumb as he approached her armpit, and bringing his hand all the way back down before he realized he’d briefly touched the side of Mabel’s right breast.  An apology died on his tongue - Mabel didn’t seem to notice the contact, and after a few seconds it seemed best not to call attention to his mistake.

He tried to be more careful, but the fact remained he couldn’t actually _see_ where his hand was going, and he had precious little spacial awareness of Mabel’s body.  And so, a few minutes later, as he stopped massaging warmth into Mabel and rested his hand on the small of her back, he noticed the flesh beneath his fingers was soft and round.  Had he any sense, Dipper would immediately have moved his hand back up Mabel’s back, quickly enough for his transgression to be beyond notice. But somehow, instinct took over, his hand squeezing gently, just to test the texture of the strange object in his grasp, and before he realized what he was doing, he had groped his twin sister’s ass.

“Whoah there,” Mabel murmured into his chest.

“Shit, sorry,” he hissed, pulling his hand away.

He would have opened a gap between them if she permitted it, but her leg remained hooked over his thighs, and her hands remained locked around his back.  She looked up at him, her total innocence serving only to make him feel more depraved.

“What’s that about?” she asked.

“I’m really sorry.  I just - I thought you were taller.”

“Huh?”

“I can’t see where my hand is, and I didn’t know where _that_ was, I just … I thought your back kept going for a while, I guess.”

She shook in his arms, not shivers now, but laughter.

“You found an accidental butt, huh?

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Good for you.  Didn’t even need both hands and a flashlight.”

“Yeah, yeah.  I said I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.  I’ve got a serious case of ice-butt, anyway.”

She nudged him with her chin.

“Just be careful.  I have it on good authority that girls’ butts are where cooties come from.”

“Sounds dangerous,” he said.

“Oh, absolutely.  But don’t worry.”

A fingernail traced an all-too-familiar pattern on his chest.

“Circle circle, dot dot,” she announced.

“Now I have my cooties shot?” he asked.

“The first of them,” she said.  “It’s a three-day treatment. Very expensive.  Hope you’re in-network.”

“I think so,” he demurred.

“Well, then, $20 copay.  Upfront. No IOU’s.”

“I think my wallet’s floating around the floorboards somewhere.”

“Anyway, I’m serious about the ice-butt,” she said.

She reached to where his hand was resting on her hip and pushed downward, curling his fingers over her right buttock, guiding him to stroke the curve from her hip down to her thigh.  Her skin was indeed cold, worryingly so, and he felt sure that was the only reason he continued to cup her bottom when she withdrew her hand.

“Much better,” she said.

“You really … you’re really okay with that?” he asked.

“I guess I am.  Looks like it doesn’t bother you all that much either.”

“No, I guess … I guess it doesn’t.”

They stayed that way a while longer, Dipper continuing to stroke up and down her back, mostly, but occasionally straying below her waist, following the curve of Mabel’s backside, running along the muscles of her thigh, and turning around again at the knee that remained hooked over his hip.

Soon she loosened her grip on him, allowing a bare inch of air between their bodies.

“I’m feeling much better,” she said.

“I’m glad.”

“Yeah.  I think I’m warmed up,” she said.  “Mostly, anyway.”

“Mostly?”

“I mean, I could be warmer.”

Her eyes met his for a moment, the impish glance of a secret between them.

“Well, we might as well … we might as well wait until you’re a hundred percent warm,” he said.

“Yeah, good idea.  Gimme a sec.”

She shuffled under the blanket, and turned away from him, sliding her backside first against his stomach, and scooting lower, the curve of her bottom now firmly against his groin.  His breath caught, and with growing concern, Dipper realized that part of him had warmed up to the point it was at least physically possible for him to become aroused.

“I gotta say,” said Mabel, “if you asked me what we were going to be doing this time today, even if you gave me ten million guesses, I don’t think I’d ever guess this.”

Her shoulders pressed to his chest, and she adjusted position so his right arm, lying across the seat, fit in the space between her shoulder and her head.  His left arm, meanwhile, floated uselessly above Mabel, until she took it in her hand and brought it to rest on her stomach.

“This … this is better?” Dipper ventured.

“Yeah.  I mean, the face-to-face stuff was working really well.  Just … you know, like cooking a burger. Had to flip over; I was done on that side.”

“Ah.”

His fingers drew gentle circles in the area just above her bellybutton.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry for what?”

“You didn’t have to do this.”

“Go hiking with you?”

“No, you dummy.   _This_ -this.”

“Ah, the uh … Mabel, honestly, I don’t even know what to call this.  Drawing up a complete blank right now.”

“I think I’m going with ‘high-intensity cuddles’ for the moment,” she said.

“Well, that’s … that’s reassuringly innocent.”

“Anyway, I think … I think if I’m honest with myself, I might’ve oversold just how cold I was.”

“Your lips were turning blue, Mabel.”

“All right, but still.  I feel bad. This must be really uncomfortable for you.”

“Uncomfortable for _me_ ?  What about _you_?”

“Wait, you’re worried about how _I_ feel about this?”

“Of course I am!  Mabel, you … you’re completely … and I’m all … I mean, this must be so gross for you.  I figured you were putting up with it because it was _marginally_ better than you freezing to death.”

Her stomach tensed beneath his hand.

“Is that … do you think I feel that way … because that’s the way _you_ feel about _me_ right now?”

“Mabel, I think you feel that way because that’s the way I _ought to_ feel about you right now.”

“And what do you _really_ feel?”

“Mabel, you’re asking a lot from me right now.”

“Please, Dipper.”

“Augh.  All right, but don’t freak out at me for telling the truth.  Because if I’m honest with myself … I don’t mind this at all.  I’d even say I kind of enjoy it.”

“Wow,” she whispered.

“Hey, you asked.”

“No, I mean … just wow.  I thought … I thought it was just _me_ thinking that.”

“So you’re not … you’re not weirded out right now?”  he asked.

“Not even a little.  Honestly, the way I’m feeling right now … like when we were little kids.  All the times I got in trouble and you came in to help. The way it feels when I realize I’m in over my head, and you’re suddenly _right there_ , picking a fight with someone, or some _thing_ , no matter how scary it was.  That sudden shift from fear to realizing everything’s going to be okay.”

“All that, huh?” he said.  “I guess my spoon game is a lot stronger than I give myself credit for.”

She giggled.

“You too, mister.  If I’m spilling my guts out you gotta do the same.”

“All right, I mean … I’m not sure how I’m feeling right now.  I don’t … I don’t think I can explain it as well. I just … this is stupid, Mabel, I know, but … you’re just so soft.  Not like, in a bad way, just … I like the way you feel. And you smell really nice.”

“Oh?   _Do_ go on…”

“And … I don’t know, maybe this sounds super-creepy, but  … I guess I’m kind of possessive of you. Like, I’m glad you’re doing your own thing in L.A., and I’m happy for how well you're doing at college.  When we were thirteen I was so worried we wouldn’t be able to function apart. But now that we are, I kind of feel … I feel like I wish we’d function a little _less_ well apart.  Or at least, I wish it wasn’t so easy for us to go days without speaking to each other.  And I guess … I guess I get jealous, sometimes? Not like upset or angry or anything, just … I’m jealous of the time your friends get to spend with you.  And right now, like this … all I can think is that, for just a few moments, you’re sort of … _mine_ ,  I guess?  Augh, that _still_ sounds creepy.  I just … I feel so close to you right now.  And, obviously, that’s literally true, but also … I don’t know, emotionally?  Ah, dammit. I don’t even know what I’m saying. I just … whatever this is right now … I really like it.  And I’m just … I’m waiting for the moment for you to tell me it’s enough, and I should let you go. And you’re gonna have to.  Because I’m pretty sure … I’m pretty sure if you don’t say anything, we’re gonna stay like this all day and all night.”

“That … that wouldn’t be so bad,” she said.  

He slipped his left hand further around her waist, pulling her just a bit more tightly against him.  His right arm was still folded before her, his upper arm pinned by Mabel’s neck. She remedied the situation, gripping his hand and pressing it somewhere around her left ribcage.  Something soft and round pressed against his forearm, and he realized that his arm was crossed over Mabel’s chest in such a way her right breast was now resting in the crook of his elbow.

_Fuck._

His heart was racing, his arousal rapidly developing.  This was too much. Way too much. He withdrew the forearm across her lower abdomen, moving his hand from her right hip to her left, hoping to hold her in place as he scooted backward and opened a gap between Mabel’s backside and his awakening groin.  But as his hand moved across her waist, Mabel caught it in her own, weaving her fingers between his, and pressing his palm to her belly. His fingers contacted something strange, and without thinking, he experimentally stroked what turned out to be a patch of brushy yet delicate hair.  

“Sh-shoot,” she hissed, dragging his hand up her stomach.

“Sorry,” he gasped.

“No, that’s my bad,” she said.  “I didn’t mean to-”

“I didn’t mean to either.”

“I know, I know.  Like, holy crap, there’s no way we’d ever-”

“I mean that would be-”

“In- _sane_ ,” she said.  “No, seriously, that was an accident.  I’m sorry, you wanna just … uh, quit doing this?”

“I mean, we can stay like this a little while longer.  I just …”

He rocked his hips a bit, shuffling backward a good six inches.

“Dipper?” she asked.  A pause, and then “ _Ohmygod_!”

“What?”

“You - you just backed away!”

“Yeah?”

“Did I … did you get all … _you know_?”

“Mabel, don’t … please don’t ask me that.”

“I’m not making fun of you,” she said.  “I just … I’m curious, that’s all.”

“And I don’t want to tell you,” he said.

“But you’re not saying ‘no’,” she said.

“Mabel.”

“All right, all right.  Fine, I won’t say anything.  Hey, what’s with this lightning?”

The storm had calmed down a fair bit, the heavy thunder all but subsided, the pounding of rain on the roof of the car now a mere pattering.  But lightning flashed, rapid yet silent, illuminating the car interior with flashes of blue and red and _oh fuck_.


End file.
